O citizens, first acquire wealth; you can practice virtue afterward.

I am invariably of the politics of the people at whose table I sit, or beneath whose roof I sleep.

I’m president of the United States, and I’m not going to eat any more broccoli!

Every country has the government it deserves.

The U.S. presidency is a Tudor monarchy plus telephones.

The best of all rulers is but a shadowy presence to his subjects.

What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him your celebration is a sham.

Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Do that which consists in taking no action, and order will prevail.

There is no method by which men can be both free and equal.

Why has the government been instituted at all? Because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice without constraint.

The Revolution is made by man, but man must forge his revolutionary spirit from day to day.